Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Topic: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot (Read 1866 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

https://www.hamishmb.com/blog/booting-nvme-older-pc-refind/

On an older machine like the 3rd gen i7 that fedex is delivering to me soon, i thought i would install a pcie adapter and an nvme drive.

The link above shows a simple way to use a bottable usb drive so that one can use their nvme drive to start an OS from it through the use of clover.  Strictly speaking though youre really booting from usb and mounting the drive and booting the OS.  Thats fine.  I can use a usb as a boot device.  But do i need clover or can i do this with grub also?  Cant i just instal artix on the pcie nvme drive and put grub on the usb pen drive and boot it that way?

Surey im not the only one on the forums with aged equipment like mine wanting to use some newer tech?  Whos got the insights?
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #1 –
GRUB 2 is the most full-featured boot loader. Bloated, but full-featured. It supports the widest range of hardware out of all available boot loaders, so this is the reason why it was chosen to be the default boot loader in many distributions including Artix.

Personally, I use Syslinux whenever possible.

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #2 –
Quote from: strajder – on
GRUB 2 is the most full-featured boot loader. Bloated, but full-featured. It supports the widest range of hardware out of all available boot loaders, so this is the reason why it was chosen to be the default boot loader in many distributions including Artix.

Personally, I use Syslinux whenever possible.


So that's a yes to the question I asked?  Sounds like a yes to me.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #3 –
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
So that's a yes to the question I asked?  Sounds like a yes to me.
I don't know. It depends on your UEFI/BIOS and hardware. The only way to find out if that setup could work is to try it. What I do know is what I already wrote - out of all boot loaders to work on certain hardware, GRUB has the most chance, unless you are trying to make it work on something actually old like 80386 or such. I wouldn't call i7 "old".

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #4 –
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
https://www.hamishmb.com/blog/booting-nvme-older-pc-refind/

On an older machine like the 3rd gen i7 that fedex is delivering to me soon, i thought i would install a pcie adapter and an nvme drive.
On one of 4/5th gen of asus Intel core boards I tried to do the same, a bios update was required to use PCI Express storage devices. However the manufacturer was not able to make mobo include them into boot options. So I am afraid 3rd gen might be in the same or worse position.
Operating System: Artix Linux x86_64

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #5 –
Thats what i was afraid of.  Im happy to use a usb boot device if it would be a work around to finding tne pcie nvme drive at boot.  Id hate to buy the addon card and drive and have no work around.  Thanks for chiming in.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #6 –
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
Cant i just instal artix on the pcie nvme drive and put grub on the usb pen drive and boot it that way?

Surey im not the only one on the forums with aged equipment like mine wanting to use some newer tech?  Whos got the insights?
I suppose, you can. The problem is in the old mobo with old UEFI firmware which doesn't recognize a pcie-connected drive as a valid bootable device. But grub bootloader installed on one disk can find and load a linux installation located on another physical disk, there is no problem with that. I suppose, if grub bootloader can recognize you pcie drive, it can also boot linux from that. Just place your EFI partition on a usb stick and install the bootloader onto it whereas having your boot and root partitions located on your pcie drive.

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #7 –
I just tried a bootable usb iso, it works in a regular USB port of course but in a USB3.0 PCIE express card adaptor it doesn't boot although I can see it with lsblk after booting into Artix as expected, and in my case I have no BIOS option I can see to boot from the PCIE slot. In my case despite the potentially higher claims of speed for the  USB3.0 adaptor (it does say depending on hardware) the transfer speed falls between between the regular USB2.0 and the ESATA slot, so it would not be as fast as using the internal SATA drive or an external ESATA one. I could also swap my CD drive for an HDD but I don't have an adapter for that here to see how that compares, presumably that would also be SATA. Different hw will differ in what it does of course.

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #8 –
Quote from: ####### – on
I just tried a bootable usb iso, it works in a regular USB port of course but in a USB3.0 PCIE express card adaptor it doesn't boot although I can see it with lsblk after booting into Artix as expected, and in my case I have no BIOS option I can see to boot from the PCIE slot. In my case despite the potentially higher claims of speed for the  USB3.0 adaptor (it does say depending on hardware) the transfer speed falls between between the regular USB2.0 and the ESATA slot, so it would not be as fast as using the internal SATA drive or an external ESATA one. I could also swap my CD drive for an HDD but I don't have an adapter for that here to see how that compares, presumably that would also be SATA. Different hw will differ in what it does of course.

My thought was that if one installed artix on an nvme drive on the pcie slot but put grub/uefi on the usb pen drive that one might be able to work around the bios issue.  Technically the boot drive would be the usb drive but it would be employing the nvme drive after that initial boot.

Was hoping someone might have done that here.  I guess it doesnt matter all that much i can just use sata for my purposes.  Ty for commenti g and sharing your thoughts.
Cat Herders of Linux

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #9 –
Quote from: VictorBrand – on
I suppose, you can. The problem is in the old mobo with old UEFI firmware which doesn't recognize a pcie-connected drive as a valid bootable device. But grub bootloader installed on one disk can find and load a linux installation located on another physical disk, there is no problem with that. I suppose, if grub bootloader can recognize you pcie drive, it can also boot linux from that. Just place your EFI partition on a usb stick and install the bootloader onto it whereas having your boot and root partitions located on your pcie drive.

Ok.  Almost missed this post.  Yes...  Thats it.  Have you ever done this?
Cat Herders of Linux
 

Re: Booting from an nvme drive connected to a pcie slot

Reply #10 –
Quote from: cat herders of linux – on
Yes...  Thats it.  Have you ever done this?
Speaking of making grub boot linux from another physical disk, yes, and this works (I have linux installation on both HDD and NVMe, and I can boot other installations with any grub bootloader). But I've never messed with pcie adapters for NVMe drives, this is only my suggestion. With old hardware, I use a SATA SSD drive (Samsung), it works without any issues: for the UEFI firmware, there is no difference between HDD and SSD attached to a SATA slot.